Ottawa Openfile: come unHenged...?

I think I've been admirably patient for a species not noted for its impulse control. But now that we've hit the second week of February flatfooted, it behooves me to ask: What the hell happened to Openfile's OttawaHenge photo contest? The one Trevor Pritchard announced on November 30, with a cash prize, and everythin'?

In the spirit of full disclosure, or possibly enlightened self-interest, I confess that some coyotes are not entirely disinterested in the outcome. Okay, I entered it. The idea of a sunset shining straight down the Sparks Street Mall tickled my semi-mythical fancy.

Also in the spirit of full disclosure, or possibly enlightened self-interest, I will note that I did my trademark lurk at the appointed hour, both of the days in the original contest period when an actual sun visibly set. Having taught numerous Fall Continuing Ed workshops in lurking, I think I might've noticed if anybody else had been doing so avec camera. They weren't.

Again in the spirit of full disclosure, or possibly enlightened self-interest, I confess that this turn of events had me rubbing my paws together in highly unseemly anticipation-slash-glee. I figured my entry had really decent odds, me being the only critter on two or four legs that was there to paw a shutter release.

But, noooooooooo... Mr. Pritchard, the morning of the first deadline, posted that sunsetty goodness had been lacking, so the deadline would change. He did not come out and state outright that there might've been only one entry. Loosey-goosey contest design ain't my problem, but I figured, oh what the heck. Maybe he doesn't run a lot of these. He didn't really post any rules -- ummm, other than the deadline -- so maybe he feels okay about changing contest rules - such as they are - after they're already out there.

Fourth Dwarf asked a buncha pointed questions about this on December 13. Since then, when we've run across one another in a back alley (we're both avid dumpster divers, for different reasons...) I've raised what passes for a querying eyebrow on a coyote, and asked, "Seen anything on an OttawaHenge winner yet?" Each time, he's shaken his head and grimaced, "No". Then we commence to scuffling over the pickin's. Woohoo!

But it's a little weird, ya know? Not the scuffling; the black-hole-like lack of a winner for a contest which was announced with a certain hoopla November 30, even if it was extended. The event's maestro may not have run many contests. I dunno - but the lack of caveats and conditions beyond the entry date was notable. But it seems to me that not setting ground rules beyond an entry deadline does not allow one to move the goalposts - twice - without making a token effort to broadcast who won the damn thing at some point. Sure I feel like the rug got pulled out from underneath me. But I'm a fair coyote. Somebody should win, even if it ain't moi. However badly my id may be pissed, you may surmise that my rambunctiously healthy doggy ego can probably take it.

When the Short Guy, always gimlet-eyed about such things, started asking questions in December, a comment from Mr. Pritchard thanked Dwarfy for noticing the contest. The lad also sidestepped 4D's questions with a degree of native talent which suggests that if this Openfile gig doesn't work out, he's still got lucrative career options writing non-reply reply scripts for federal ministers... but I digress.

Except that on this very blog, Trevor said, and I quote, "...we'll definitely be announcing a winner in January."

That's unequivocal. I believe that Trev, and Openfile, will want to make good on it. Now that we've landed flatfooted in the second week of February, 'n all. Possibly before Valentine's Day...

Ode to beavers

Who could ever forget the Elgin Street Irregulars' historic, heady foray into the (very likely lucrative, if we'd ever actually winched our notoriously incoherent act together...) BeaverBalls™ biz?

Yup, we've long reserved a warm spot for Castor canadensis and his charming, if strange, habits. Such as (allegedly) eating his own testicles when threatened.

So, it is with a certain, ummm, proprietorial disdain that we tee off to trash conservatory senator Nicole Eaton's (ev)ill-conceived proposal to replace Our Illustrious National Rodent with some polar bear.

If beavers were ever to actually chew off their own business to spit at somebody, they might wish to begin with Ms. Eaton.

Her cover story is that the Beav is a "dentally defective rat". We need barely slow down to point out that slagging rats places her in the position of badmouthing many sitting members of her party, before hitting the gas to note that the more plausible reason for her libel of our furry pal is that, while he's claimed squatters' rights to the national identity for centuries, he was only officially installed in 1975. Under, you guessed it, Pierre Trudeau's Liberals.

It takes no genius to see that the focus of the Harper Government™®© since gaining its coveted strong stable majority™®© ain't so much the stupid economy as tearing down, stomping, burning, shooting and pissing on any and all things liberal. And calling it nation building. ™®©.

So despite the senator's cutesy persiflage, we can, ummm, probably agree that this is one more case of these guys' systematic scorched-liberal policy, as they try to replace all those inconvenient decades of collective national memory with (yet more) crap, artfully spin-doctored from the whole cloth.

Do I have to stoop to quoting literary classics, like some intellectually-bankrupt Ottawa Citizen columnist? Yes? Crap. Okay:

"If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."

You already know the book. Oh, never mind. I digress

Base image: Wikimedia Commons

Sounds of summer

Casa Coyote's entrance is beneath a fencepost right where four downtown highrise properties meet. This, felicitously, means that if the relevant property management companies ever notice, they're gonna have trouble agreeing on the legalities of eviction. They hate each other. And I'm proactively lawyered-up... but I digress, already. Possibly a speed record, even for me. And I just digressed, there, again. Dammit, this isn't starting well.

No, this screed's subject is, ummm, green yard care companies. Four property managers, so four contractors. What they have in common besides motley fleets of green trucks full of implements, is what looks to dumb coyotes to be a fanatical hatred of actual plants.

Anything green that isn't a truck disturbs 'em. They assault quiet with fanatical will. Platoons of beefy college and university students are their foot soldiers. Ill-muffled chainsaws, chemical sprayers, lawn mowers, edgers, hedge cutters, sweepers and blowers are their weapons. Based on the number of noisy, reeking little two-stroke motors alone, it's safe to say that they don't really like nature much. It's stunning the environmental damage one motor of a couple of tablespoons' displacement can spew in a few minutes. You could look it up. These guys have full-on arsenals. The irony of them purporting to be green-care gardeners is not lost on me.

Spring's opening attack is to serially butcher trees on the property lines from all directions, chainsawing potential overhangs until any hint of shade is gone. I'm pretty sure they're paid by the pound, because all of 'em buzz and chip trees regardless of whether they've already been ummm, pruned by their brothers in arms.

Then they gear up for summer: serial waves of earmuffed infantry hit the different properties, spraying noxious-smelling stuff, cutting, and blowing up a storm. They leave lawns no nappier than pool tables. They force shrubs into smooth lollipop shapes. And interestingly, they lavish more love on parking lots than they do on herbiage. Complete pressure-washing after winter, weekly sweeping, vacuuming and blowing through the high season to make sure not a pebble, grass or hedge clipping mars the hot asphalt.

I imagine someone thinks they make things look nice, but the constant noise and the half-burnt petroleum and dust that hang in the air throughout the summer kinda belie this.

Now, ya don't have to be a coyote to know that cities are about noise. And crap. Wake up any weekday before 6 a.m. to swivel your (pointy) ears, and you'll hear Ottawa's duller overnight hum crescendo to a full-blown roar by no later than 6:30. It's what cities do. But if each of these allegedly green companies have to issue their foot-troops with earmuffs to keep 'em from damaging their hearing, waddaya think it does to nearby denizens of high-rise condos - and low-rise dens - who hear all of 'em? And who are left to suck up the smog that squelches any nostalgic aroma of new-mown lawn?

I'm just sayin'...

A Wellington Street view

I best know local uber-partisan Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre for an endless series of rabid political cheap shots that seem to me to be firmly rooted in a deeply considered intellectual process involving either cartoon logic or clinical insanity. Come to think of it, his parliamentary question period antics probably give rabies a bad name. He regards John Baird (or possibly Baird's hair) as his political mentor, for cripes' sakes...

So, earlier this week when PP, a member of the federal access to information, privacy and ethics committee, took a, ummm, principled stand against Google Street View in Ottawa, I immediately began looking for the guy's ummm, well-reasoned angle. There has to be one. There always is.

PP claimed that he had concerns about the service's potential for invading privacy. Since he backs a law 'n order agenda, which can occasionally involve stuff like, oh, ubiquitous closed circuit TV cameras aimed at the general populace for no particular reason, I hadda kinda wonder.

Now, suddenly he has flipflopped, (assuming foursquare, steadfastly antiflipflop Tories can ever be said to flipflop. I'm sure they call it something else among themselves. I digress.) musing that a "useful and popular service" like Street View could fall victim to Canada's privacy laws vis-a-vis public surveillance. Which, unlike earlier this week, are now apparently too strong. And so must be modified to make them weaker. To allow, ummm, useful and popular services. To whom, exactly, other as yet unspecified services might also be useful and popular with, remains an open question for now.

Oh. Now I get it... and I'm torn. And perhaps slightly more paranoid than usual. Tooling around virtual versions of the great cities of the world amuses me. Pretending Ottawa is a great city of the world would amuse me even more. I like Street View. But if a little git like PP supports it...

Tales from the sickroom floor

Ahem. Some of you among our avid followers may have noticed that the Elgin Street Irregulars have not been following the regular posting schedule of recent late. It seems that we, like just about every damn blogger in the near vicinity, may be undergoing a massive communal rhinovirus event.

Except me. I don't hold with hanging out with rhinoceroses (rhinoceri...?). Too big and stompy. Oh, I warned 'em all. But they wouldn't listen.

So, please direct your auras to transmit harmonious curative waves toward Elgin Street. And hope and pray that all of this close consorting with perfidious rhinocerosesesesesessss had nothing to do with questionable, unapproved, possibly illegal and immoral research for the Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm.... the mind reels. Rather as if we all had some kinda flu.

Death, taxes and, oh yeah, annoying phone calls

You might think Canada's tax collectors would be a sharp bunch. Competent, educated, shrewd, with sharpened pencils at the ready. And the latest electronic tools at their disposal to flag overdue accounts, zero in on debtors and efficiently scoop up cash that's rightly owed to Canadians.

You would also be wrong.

At least, if my recent experience is anything close to typical.

Here is a verbatim transcript, with only minor identity-protecting edits, of a message left on my home answering machine:

"Hi Indochinese Obstetrician, this is Peso Cohlecta from the Canada Revenue Agency. I'm calling in regard to your old numbered corporation X87X97PD. Currently there's a lot of overdue GST returns. And I think we've been having ongoing conversations -- or you have -- with different people at the organization. I just want to get this account cleared up in terms of file-up-to-date and closed. Would you please give me a call and I can help you with that in any way I can. Currently with the notional assessment that's been done, we think you owe $7,500, which is no doubt wrong, but it's the debt that currently stands until this gets corrected, so please call me."

Things I told Mr. Cohlecta upon calling him back:
1. I have never had, nor been involved in, a numbered corporation of any kind.
2. I have not had ongoing conversations with people at the Canada Revenue Agency, just one previous conversation six months ago with him, Mr. Cohlecta.
3. In this previous conversation, I told him my name is Independent Observer, not Indochinese Obstetrician, and that I had absolutely no clue what he was talking about.

Mr. Cohlecta then said, "Oh, we must be looking for a different Indochinese Obstetrician."

"OK," I replied, "what does that have to do with me?"

"Well, your names are very similar."

"Actually, no, they are not even close."

"Are you calling me back from a 905 area code number?"

"No, it's a 613 number. I live in Ottawa."

"Oh," said Mr. Cohlecta, "that's the problem. I'm going to scratch your phone number from the database."

"I'm still totally confused," I asked. "How could this happen?"

"Well, when we are seeking a debtor, sometimes we cast a wide net and go after people with names that might match."

"This is the second call I've received from you. How do I know there won't be more? Could you kindly send me something in writing to assure me this was a mistake?"

"Well, your number has been scratched from the database. You have my personal assurance I won't call you again. And I'm going to be here for years."

We are all doomed.

Word Cop - Just go with "For example"

Case and Point?

ZeroMeansZero - Case and point the ongoing saga of the sewage into our river... [1 additional demerit for missing comma after "point". 3 additional demerits for gratuitous cheap shots throughout blog].

Beholding and Becoming - “When the Kings Come Marching In” is case and point.

Aggravated Cases - Use in Blog Title:

Case and point - http://spencercaselog.blogspot.com/ I am Spencer Case, currently known as Specialist Case among my battle buddies in the 207th MPAD [2 additional demerits because when your name is Case and you are in the military, "Case in point" would have been a way better name for your blog. However, sentence is suspended due to the mitigating factor that you blogged in Iraq and your last post in 2006 says you should be going home soon and then nothing... ]

Case and Point - Case for and point of living. Maybe. Big stuff. Small stuff. All good stuff. [1 additional demerit for not using other possible definitions of "case and point", for example, "surreptitiously search a building and identify valuable items"]

CASE AND POINT - MY POINTS I THINK THAT MAY BE OF INTREST TO MOST PEOPLE. AND sell race cars and parts [Penalty: HTTP 404. Use in Title combined with use of upper case that switches to lower case for no apparent reason and mispelling of "interest", with no mitigating factors

Too many other examples to cite here.

Further research is suggested to verify the hypothesis that those who use "case and point" have more extreme and less tolerant opinions than those who use "case in point", but that both groups are less strident than those who instead use "for example", "such as", or "like".

Alerts for Deputized Word Cops from Language Log:

1. "Wile away" may actually be acceptable.
2. Keep your eyes open for overzealous censoring software that produces text with words like "clbuttic", "conbreastution" and "Buttociated Press"